Going Back To Vocational School Leaves Less Time........

Managing Your Time While In School

Well, as most of you know, I have recently went back to school at my ripe age of 54, soon to be 55.  I am entering the field of Information Technology, or IT.  You know, computers and such!  All the in and outs.  A one year course that I am attending at Tech Skills here in Houston, Texas.

This suddenly limits me to the amount of leisure time I have on hand and online!  I get up and go to school for a total of about 7.5 hours all together, then I come home, and low and behold, have a computer lab in the making in the bedroom with two systems up and running, plus my own system that I am typing this on in the living room.  Needless to say, my schooling continues when I get home, as I work in my home lab experimenting, troubleshooting and learning.

I am on week two of a one year course, so a long way to go.

One of the major drawbacks of going to school full time is that there is no income on my part to the household.  So we rely on my wife's SSI and the very meager savings we have.  I am hoping for some donations or goodwill from others that we have helped in the past!  The worst case scenario is that I have to drop out of school at some point and get some labor job with no future and that would be detrimental to my health.  It is a decision that does keep me awake at nights and detracts from my thought process in my studies.

The tuition for the course has been covered by a grant, which is wonderful to a point.  The funding does not cover the certificates that are needed.  Each certificate costs additional money for each course.  Without the certification, the schooling becomes rather useless.  So again, a financial burden.  I am attempting another source of funding for the certification, but that is something that I have to wait on to learn more.

Insecurity is not a pleasant feeling as you lay in bed and wonder how, down the line, you are going to pay the bills to maintain a roof over your head and such.

A quick summary of how I reached this point: I was injured approximately 2 1/2 years ago on the job and the end result, after two surgeries, is that I can no longer do the types of work I have done all my life.  No unemployment as there is a time limit, and worker's comp played out well over a year ago.

So, with all that being said, should I be scarce here and elsewhere online, please know it is not so much my choosing, but my circumstances that limit me.